Sure vlc shouldn't segfault with an empty disk, but if you mount the disk and it show "no medium found", you don't need to dig vlc, as all players will have the problem that your dvd isn't detecting the medium.

Fix the dvd problem, you may as well avoid the vlc bug after solving it.
I was about to suggest looking at iso9660 support, but it's not need.
But at least ask help on fixing your dvd to read the disk instead of querying users for vlc help.

Video DVDs do not contain a useful filesystem. To be sure, its present and can be mounted but its deliberately corrupt to stop you using dd to copy the video.

Video players play the video using a block list to know what blocks and in what order to read the disk to play the video.
This requires raw device access, which you clearly have since you can play CDDA. That works he same way.

Taken together, this implies that your software stack is broken.
Does revdep-rebuild wand to do anything?
If so, let it finish._________________Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

I've tried a usb dvd drive this evening since I posted the thread, external drive is recognised but the discs are not (including blank discs). GUI apps also see the drive(s) but think they are empty. I wonder could it be a permissions problem? I am in the cdrom group.

When I said I'd tried an external it was writing to a dvdr. Oddly, k3b reports a blank disk as "no medium" rather than 'empty medium' and I assumed as soon as I saw that that it was a configuration error on my part and dvd's simply weren't recognised (I know, ass u me {with the emphasis being very much on me}).

I should have tested more thoroughly before I asked for help. Apologies galore.

Video DVDs do not contain a useful filesystem. To be sure, its present and can be mounted but its deliberately corrupt to stop you using dd to copy the video.

Video players play the video using a block list to know what blocks and in what order to read the disk to play the video.
This requires raw device access, which you clearly have since you can play CDDA. That works he same way.

Eh, sorry Neddy, but that's not right at all .... *ducks*

The DVD sits on an UDF filesystem -- make sure *that* is in your kernel support.

Have you replaced the drive and are you *sure* that the old one was bad?

The reason I ask is that I have identical symptoms and my drive is fine. It boots from a live-dvd with no problems, but it will not mount (or recognize) a DVD when I'm booted into my Gentoo system. It works fine with a music CD, but DVDs are "empty."

I'm suspecting udev issues since I allowed udev-215 to install and had to screw around with gudev (and that involved tricky things with gvfs.) But that also involved installing a new kernel, and maybe I broke something with that. And yes, beandog, I checked and CONFIG_UDF_FS=y is set.

In any case, I'm pretty sure the problem is something in the system that I've broken, and not a hardware problem. I'd love for someone to convince me otherwise, a replacement DVD is cheap.

I'm not sure where to even start looking for the problem._________________Ignorance killed the cat. Curiosity was framed.